College professor Nguyen Ngoc Hung had spent nearly three decades searching for the remains of his brother, who died at age 20 fighting U.S. troops. Hung had scoured battlefields in Vietnam's Central Highlands and talked to military commanders and pored through archival records, always coming up empty-handed. Finally, in desperation, he went to a psychic here and explained his grief. "This is easy," Pham Thi Hang said. "I can help."

November 13, 2000 | EDWARD J. BOYER and GEORGE RAMOS, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

So, you knew the election would be close, but you never expected this back-and-forth vote with recounts and computer glitches? Those who see meaning in the stars say they saw it coming. The culprit? The planet Mercury, which began its apparent retrograde--or backward--movement in the heavens for the last time this year on Oct. 18 and ended it at 9:22 p.m. EST on election day.

Nikki has some gypsy in her. You can see it in her eyes that look sad and serious, even when she is laughing. She is from New Orleans, which she pronounces with only two syllables--N'or-lins. She talks about New Orleans as if it were a city she just barely escaped. A place that can grab you by the ankles and suck you under, like quicksand.

In the early '90s, Cadillac Tramps were the most popular attraction on the O.C. grass-roots club scene. Its quaking bluesy grooves, scorching guitars and a distinctive, rumbling but rubbery sound that front man Mike "Gabby" Gaborno called "the forbidden beat"--were the musical attractions. The songs often gave wry accounts of street life, their sardonic view reflecting the band members' common background as former drug abusers who saw music as an alternative to self-destruction.

In Ojai you can drive a car or you can drive a Carmen. The difference is as blatant as the tribal geometrics festooning the body, the painted lizards and chile peppers on the hood, the Mayan astrological signs, the rainbow of swirls and spirals, the touch of the artist Carmen Abelleira-White as opposed to the brush of the auto painter Earl Scheib. Last year there were no Carmens. Now half a dozen ply the lanes and highways of the art-conscious town.

It's hard to get a fix on the globe-enthralling, hooligan-beset World Cup, which, depending on what you read, was either exhilarating, dangerous, unforgettable or unmemorable. For sure, it was zany enough. The New York Times' Jere Longman remembers, "Glen Hoddle, the English coach, hired a faith healer. The Romanian players dyed their hair gold. Miroslav Blazevic, the eccentric Croatian coach, got through the tournament on cigarettes, chocolates and faxes from his astrologer."

Most Sundays, you can find Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz among the Tarot card readers, fortunetellers and incense sellers on the Venice Beach boardwalk with a booth of his own: "Jewish Astrology." If you miss the sign, he's unmistakable: a jovial 51-year-old man with a long beard who answers to the nickname "Schwartzie" and who sports a tie-dyed T-shirt and a baseball cap bearing the words "Grateful Yid."

Investors, beware the Ides of February. Just as the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar of his impending doom, financial astrologers are warning Wall Street that the stock market's near-relentless rise soon may be over.

Madame Soleil, 83, a popular astrologer in France who reputedly advised President Francois Mitterrand. Born in the Loire Valley, Germaine Soleil began her career at a wooden carnival stall and later opened an astrology office in Paris. She was a frequent guest on television talk shows and had her own radio call-in astrology show. She was so well known that former French President Georges Pompidou once quipped at a hostile press conference, "I'm not Madame Soleil."

Whether or not to recommend Astrology and Predictions puts me in a quandary. I'm not a fan of the "mystic arts," the book's subject matter, and am hesitant to tout this sort of stuff to parents and kids. On the other hand, this offering is fun and intriguing, a pleasant way to while away an afternoon. Jon Tremaine's text provides a solid introduction to astrology, numerology, runes, palm reading and the like; the graphics and artwork are a nice complement. There are 16 pages of interpretations for more than 20 fortune-telling variations at the end of the 48-page book, as well as a breakdown for the signs in the zodiac.